Frederick Douglass

A little learning, indeed, may be a dangerous thing, but the want of learning is a calamity to any people.

We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and the future.

America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.

To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.

I recognize the Republican party as the sheet anchor of the colored man's political hopes and the ark of his safety.

The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.

Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.

Man's greatness consists in his ability to do and the proper application of his powers to things needed to be done.

Fugitive slaves were rare then, and as a fugitive slave lecturer, I had the advantage of being the first one out.

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.